Hey Reader,

Someone left a comment a while back asking what my tinnitus actually sounds like. Not "do you have it," which people ask a lot. What it actually sounds like.

I told them the truth. It's not one tone anymore. It's several, different in each ear, all going at once. A kind of chorus effect on the sound, guitarists will know what a chorus effect does to sound, a gentle phasing up and down, and that's built slowly over thirty years, getting a little worse every decade until it stopped being background noise and became something that's just always there. Last thing at night it is most noticeable, when I am lay in bed about to sleep. It is even worse when warm night's hit, then we have the windows open and I have to wear ear plugs to keep out the world, and ear plugs seem to make it worse, in silence.

It started simply enough. March 1991, a mate and I came out of Judas Priest at the Hammersmith Odeon on the Painkiller tour. Peak sound that night hit somewhere around 120 decibels in a sealed Art Deco theatre built for 3,500 people and no exit for the noise. Nobody handed out earplugs. That wasn't how it worked back then. Thta wasn't the only lod gig, obviously. But it was one I remember because neither of us could hear each other talk when we left, even when we were shouting in each other's ears.

My hearing came back the next day. A faint,single tone stayed behind, faint enough to ignore most of the time. It came and went. Or maybe my perception of it came and went, who knows for sure.

And of course, it wasn't just that one night. It was thousands of hours after it, in control rooms, and clubs... and rehearsals, yeah they were probably the worst, everyone turning up to compete with the drums that had no volume control. One concert didn't give me the chorus. My lige choices did. A tone here, a shift in pitch there, until what started as one thin ringing became the full thing I hear now. Constant. Underneath everything. The only time I don't notice it is when there's enough real noise to cover it, or I'm absorbed enough in something else that my attention moves elsewhere.

For a long time I thought of it as the bill for a life spent in loud rooms. Damage. Evidence of excess.

I don't think of it that way anymore. I don't value the ringing. Honestly? I despise it. But I do value the life that I lived, even if it happened while I wasn't spending every night trying to protect myself from it.

If I could keep the memories and lose the chorus, I'd do it in a heartbeat. That option was never on the table.

These days I still go to gigs. I just wear earplugs.

Experience is a wonderful teacher. It's just not always a gentle one.

Mark
The Quiet Rebel

PS. I f you missed to see, the finihsing line challenge has a fixed start date for the first cohort, 27th July. There will be others, but this run through will help shape the future of what is to come. It is free, so why not help shape the future, and work on another song at the same time. You might even find someone to work on it with.
Click here to take part